


a spring morning

by wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Academy Arc, Friendship, Gen, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 06:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: The first time Aburame Shino ever really noticed Nara Shikako.





	a spring morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Voldecourt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voldecourt/gifts).

"Naruto!" Nara Shikako snaps. 

The whole room freezes, including Iruka-sensei up front by the blackboard. Class hasn't started yet, so everyone gets to watch the scene play out in front of them without interruption. 

Uzumaki Naruto slowly turns his head, his book still held in the air. "What?" The cricket on the table next to him gives a complacent hop, moving about one handspan farther from the place where it almost met its untimely doom. 

Shino lets the air out of his lungs and carefully calms his small amount of kikaichu, who had been stirred to agitation by the spike in Shino's adrenaline. He doesn't think anyone heard them. He hopes not. No one in his class has figured out that he has them yet. 

"You can't just kill it," Shikako is saying. 

Naruto's face scrunches. "Why not?" he asks. 

"It's not hurting anyone," Shikako gestures at the open window, which is probably how the cricket had gotten in. "Just put it outside. Okay?" 

"Okay. I guess...this little guy is pretty small, huh?" Naruto frowns down at the cricket for a moment and then puts his book down carefully, stretching his arms out comically far to place it down almost to the other side of Inuzuka Kiba, his neighbor. He scoops the cricket up in his hands — talking softly to it all the while, as if he hadn't just almost killed it seconds beforehand — and darts over to the window to set it free. 

Ignorance and stupidity are different from malice, and even this young Shino knows not to hold Naruto's now-corrected attitude against him. Especially not when he champions every bug they find in the classroom from then on, no matter how much the other kids scream, and once scolds Akamaru for trying to eat a spider. 

What sticks out to Shino from that spring morning before class started is Shikako's attitude. The way she sinks back into herself once the class's attention is focused on Naruto's journey to the window. The way she remembers to look up from her reading and give Naruto a thumbs up when he returns to his chair and turns around looking for her approval. Shino never forgets that Shikako protects the small things other people are happy to thoughtlessly destroy. 


End file.
